You wouldn't think it, but fighting game mechanics are actually a terrible pain in the ass to convert into an RPG, especially into an existing system. I've been trying for quite a long time and could never quite make it work.

There are ways to get close...

Playing a Monk in D&D version 3.5, there are a number of feats that will give you MK-esque moves. Trips, grapples, flying kicks, even a hadoken-esque "Ki Blast".

White Wolf games might work as well, if you removed all the flavor text and added your own. Particularly Exalted or Changeling.

WW also actually made a Street Fighter RPG in the 90's. The book's extremely rare, but you could probably find a .pdf copy of the rulebook online. The only problem is, the way it handles its use of fighting styles is pretty much garbage, because it tries to turn the moves of the original Street Fighter 2 characters into real world styles and they don't match up. For example, what they call "Capoeira" is actually Blanka's moves...which is just plain wrong. "Ninjutsu" is Vega's, I think. It continues on like that, embarrassingly so. With some rewriting, however, the system could be made worthwhile fairly quickly for running a campaign that feels like a tournament fighter or beat 'em up.

There's a newer, indy-created system called "Fight! The Fighting Game RPG" that's specifically designed to emulate fighting games (there's even mechanics in its second rulebook for Fatalities), but the character creation rules are awfully complicated because it's designed so you create your own special moves from scratch and have to pick all their properties and balance them and such, and because it focuses so heavily on combat, there's little to no rules or stats for the non-combat parts of P&P gaming, like social interaction, jumping & climbing, sneaking, picking pockets, etc.
Of course, the other problem which has discouraged my own efforts is: If you have a bunch of people in your gaming group, and only one or two of them is playing out a combat at any given time because their characters are in a 1v1 tournament...guess how bored the rest of the party gets just sitting there doing nothing, waiting for their turn to be in a scene?

I don't think anything too hardcore has ever gone very far, but there have been a couple of recent, soft alternatives that might be worth looking at. If the pen & paper rabbit hole proves too big a hurdle, you could always try to build something more accessible around these elements:

- Mortal Kombat Online Role Playing Game.
- Kreate-A-Kharacter VII Role Playing Thread.
- Official Chat & Forum Kombat Fight League ["RPCheev"]


If it's any use, KFL is essentially built around this type of problem.

It boils down to accumulated user stats through an algorithm, so I gather it's much less hardcore than a pen & paper RPG (and slightly esoteric in its own way), but it does mean the bottom line doesn't break down if people get busy or flakey. There's the 24/7 chat option (with some catches) for the flip side of interest, as well. [Human interaction if you actually stick around, too!]

Not sure that it really services the same desires as a proper, general RPG, but if you guys wanted to graft a new idea to it and take a run at Season 2014 -- it's a softcore alternative. Might be a useful fall back/feed system.

@Mick-Lucifer: Thanks for the suggestions Mick definitely some food for thought.

@Razor: Yeah I can see how finding a fun, fluid system, that's entertaining for a group is complicated. I did some searching and found a few random threads out in the forum wilds of the internet suggesting something called
Feng Shui: Action Movie Roleplaying as well as a White Wolf expansion Burn Legend to Shards of the Exalted Dream (customized and re-skinned to fit MK lore). Have you heard of any of these.

Also random bit...I actually have a physical copy of that Street Fighter book that I got when I was a kid. Wonder if it's worth anything? Lord knows my 90's comics aren't.